The Myth of "Turning Your Brain Off"

Last weekend saw the release of Transformers: Age of Extinction, and to absolutely nobody's surprise it was outright panned by most critics. Also not surprising is that general audiences completely ignored them and went to go see it anyways. If its box office count is any indication, Age of Extinction might end up being the highest grossing movie of the year in a few short weeks time, completely in line with industry expectations. I'm not entirely sure why there's such a vast gulf between critic and audience reception of this movie. I think there's this widespread, rarely spoken assumption that film critics look down on popular films. I don't know if anyone really knows where this attitude comes from, maybe some people think it's out of a misplaced elitism or something.

That's not to say I think people are wrong, at least not entirely. Professional critics probably are at least somewhat disconnected from the tastes of general audiences. Heck, that's been true for as long as critics have been...well...critics. After all, they're individuals with their own tastes just like anyone else, and those tastes have been altered and refined by years of watching film after film after film. To them, what's another loud, noisy blockbuster, right? They've seen hundreds after all, and they probably don't have the attachment to the franchise other people might.

That's something I think has a lot to do with it too. People say to me that they already knew the movie was going to be bad, but justified it because "hey, it's Transformers. Gotta go see it for Optimus Prime, right?" It's almost like whatever care they might have about the quality of the actual film was superseded by a kind of religious fan loyalty. "Church sucks, but hey, it's something I gotta do anyways!" It's like when a lot the people who despised Star Wars: Episode I end up going to see the other two anyways. Their going is more because they feel they have to out of a sense of loyalty to the brand even when they know it won't reach their expectations. It's a good thing the people who grew up on Transformers are in their twenties and thirties. Now they have families they can bring along. After all more people equals more tickets sold.

I'll be upfront in saying that I didn't grow up with Transformers.I didn't play with the toys, watch the TV show or buy the lunchboxes or whatever. Nostalgia's a funny thing, it can seem so right when you're on the inside, but to the outsider your love of something seems strange and out of place. Whenever I bring up that I don't like the Transformers movies to someone, they'll go out of their way to let me know that my dislike of the movie is misguided, that I'm viewing the movie the wrong way and that I need to shift my perspective. They'll say I'm being to hard on it and that maybe I just need to lower my expectations. This is hardly a universal thing, but it's widespread enough that it feels like I hear it all the time whenever mediocre/crap franchise movies come out. Why do people seem so defensive about a movie they don't even like all that much? More often than not, in relation to the Transformers franchise, what people tell me tends to just boil down to just one particular statement:

That I just need to turn off my brain and enjoy it.

Right off the bat, I feel like when a person says this to me they're seeing me as the sort of person that thinks they're somehow "better than", or "above" certain genres of movies, that I always need to watch "smart" movies or movies that are challenging in order to enjoy them. Without even knowing me or my taste in movies they've pegged the type of person I am simply because I don't like this one particular action movie their really into. There are so many action franchise movies I love, yet disliking this particular movie or that particular movie somehow means I haven't come down off my lofty intellectual perch to mingle with the commoners. Yes I'm overreacting, I get way to sensitive about things like that? I'm sick and tired of people trying to separate my taste in movies from theirs along lines as arbitrary as "being able to turn the brain on and off".

I mean is too much to ask for at least some capacity to allow for audience investment? I'm not saying a movie needs to have hours of set-up and character development in order to make for a gratifying action payoff (though there have been films that have used this to great effect) but I should at least get a sense of what's being fought over besides just "We're good, their bad, let's fight!" For the action to have an impact beyond just being nice to look at, I need to know why I should care particularly about these particular characters rather than say anyone else.

The Raid, for example, is brutally efficient at establishing exactly who our main character is and why we should care about him. Before any of the action even begins, we see him stroke his wife's pregnant stomach, telling her softly of his intention to rescue his brother from sinking lower in his criminal behavior. Even though we've established his skills as a fighter just a moments before, that briefest of exchanges tells us that he's also sensitive and cares about his family. We aren't just told that through dialogue, it's shown to us. I know "show don't tell" is kind of a cliche, but in a medium as visually oriented as film, sometimes a simple touch can be more effective than 10 minutes of exposition could ever be. All of this is covered neatly within the first five minutes of the movie, and beautifully primes the audience for the non-stop action that follows.

It doesn't even have to be chiefly emotional stakes, I'd settle for thematic stakes too. In the final fight against Agent Smith in The Matrix, our heroes aren't exactly fleshed out three-dimensional characters, but there's a symbolic significance to the two fighters that sums up a lot of the film's major thematic thrust: the conflict between freedom and control. Can you name one overarching theme in the Transformers movies beyond just "we need to save people".

Speaking of The Matrix, you could argue that the fact that Neo's basically an audience surrogate aids in our investment in his situation. To be fair, the Transformers movies do often have what could be called an audience surrogate in the form of Sam Witwiki from the first three, and Cade Yeager from this one. The thing I don't think Transformers gets though is that, on their own, though, audience surrogates tend to be pretty boring. Oftentimes they're more so defined by their interactions with the more interesting supporting cast than by who they themselves are (because they're supposed to be you!). In Age of Extinction, outside of Stanley Tucci's wacko turn as a Steve Jobs-esque inventor, there really isn't much of a compelling supporting cast to speak of.

That doesn't mean a movie can't be enjoyed from a purely from a visual standpoint though, right?  I'll often hear people say "well...the story's pretty bad, but hey, that action, right?" Thing is I'm not entirely sure what the difference is. I think most people have this idea in their heads that "story" is mostly just dialogue and plot, but I think in the case of action movies it can mean so much more. When you really think about it, action has the wonderful capacity to tell stories through the character's movement. We grow to know who those characters are through the way they move and react to what goes on around them. Conflict can be expressed directly through actual, real, physical conflict. Don't get me wrong, there is certainly a lot of it going on in Transformers, there's no denying that. With that said, can you think of a single action sequence in that franchise that stands out in your mind as truly memorable? I can't.

I recently stumbled on an pretty interesting video that goes into some detail about Michael Bay's aesthetic:

Michael Bay is known for his incredibly kinetic camera movements and quick cuts. The video above cites his frequent use of telephoto lenses to compress the image so that the parallax of the background movies even faster. Every single shot is crammed from edge to edge with stuff, but we never stick with that stuff for more than a few seconds. While all of this can help give each shot greater sense of immediacy and urgency, in the grand scheme of the visual narrative of an action sequence it rarely adds anything, while at the same time robbing a sequence of greater coherence and audience orientation.  Every shot acts as a moment of instant gratification, which might make it appealing to some but not adding up to anything more than the sum of its parts. Action sequences should almost be like mini-movies in and of themselves. We need a set-up, rising action, climax, and resolution, In this movie, there is no arc. It's a string of climaxes tightly stitched together to hide from the audiences that it really isn't much more than the cinematic equivalent of shaking keys in front of a baby and making noises, and frankly I find it boring and don't understand what people find "fun" about it.

I'm not going to spend the rest of this post picking apart the action in Transformers piece by piece. There are plenty of articles across the web that go into enough detail on the mechanics of cinematic action. This article by Film Crit Hulk, for example, is far more comprehensive than I could ever hope to be on the subject of what makes good action. Definitely be sure and give that a read.

My point, though, is that Transformers has very few of the qualities of what I feel makes for compelling action outside of the fact that it superficially "looks cool" (which is debatable). When it really comes down to it, though, what constitutes good action is a largely subjective measure. My idea of what makes good action could be totally different than yours. Hell, I love the live action Speed Racer movie and nearly everyone hates that. If you find the action in Transformer's engaging, more power to you. Maybe it just means you found something in the movie I couldn't.

The thing is, with Transformers in particular, there's more wrong with it than just bad action and story. It's no secret that the film's humor and tone is...sophomoric, but these films throw a lot of really reprehensible attitudes like racism, misogyny, and homophobia around like they were nothing at all. To ignore them is like saying they're acceptable as long as the film's texture is appealing.

It's the same with movies like 300 and Sin City, I can enjoy them for their atmosphere and stylistic flair, but there's always just this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that the undertones in those films can be kind of...disgusting. Movies engage our minds whether we're "thinking" about them or not. Maybe they don't do so on an intellectual level, but whether we're aware of it or not movies can passively affect the way we see the world around us, especially when we're younger. Movies can ask for us, the audience, to sympathize with certain characters more than others. These characters might do awful things, but our inclination as the audience to their story is to empathize with the aspects of these characters we have in common. If the movie makes the conflict of its narrative explicitly black and white, it communicates to the audience that our heroes are justified and every action they take is for the side of good, and all opposition is then, by its very nature, evil.

In this movie, nothing our heroes do is being presented with the slightest bit of ambiguity. Everything they do is right, even when it contradicts things they may have said earlier. One scene Optimus Prime gallantly expresses the necessity for peace for all species, but then he swears up and down about how he's going to kill every last human that has wronged him. He and the other Autobots seem to constantly get off on the notion of wanton violence, kill creatures just because they annoy them, and bullying people just because they think they're ugly. Even while they mourn the senseless deaths of their brethren, They cause the deaths of countless thousands of people (completely validating the concerns of the eeeeevil corporate and government types we're told to hate). Even while Prime pounds into our heads the importance of independence and liberty, our heroes violently subjugate the Dinobots to help in their cause. Hell, even Cade's underage daughter has no agency of her own, she's just a sexualized object to be fought over by her dad and her boyfriend (and I could go on and on about how creepy implications of that are).

I mean considering the movie's marketed chiefly towards kids are these really the values we want to be teaching them? People tend to dismiss these kinds of concerns because, well, it's "just a movie" right? People don't seem to realize just how our consumption of media can subtly effect the way we think and how we perceive the world around us. We're not taught growing up to perceive media as anything more than a way to be lectured to and not a way to spark dialogue and feedback.

Hell, if you look at the movie Inception, you could make a case that the whole movie could be read as a metaphor for the ways films influence people. It's been said that movies are dreams brought to life, and they're constructed meticulously by the people involved to make us feel and experience their ideas in certain ways. When people complain about culture encouraging boys to worship notions of machismo, violence, and objectification, these movies of things that encourage it. What's worse about it is that it's not just taught, it's SOLD to us. The attitudes of this movie are already there, and people are paying money to have those notions passively re-enforced because of our need for explosive computer vomit.

And you know what, the worst thing about it is that its all our fault. If you paid to see this movie, you are part of the problem.

Sure, maybe you noticed the racism, misogyny etc. in the other ones and thought it was a bit much, but hey, you can always enjoy a bad movie ironically, right? The thing is that distinction doesn't exist for the studio. When someone asked Michael Bay what he thought of people who hated his movies he said he didn't care, "they're still going to see the movie" and he's right! Money is money, and whether you liked it or not something brought you to the theater to spend your money specifically on that movie.

I find it hard to believe that Michael Bay doesn't already know this, he's made too much money off his films to not have at least some notion of what he's doing. I mean I can certainly respect him for the level of work he puts into organizing and coordinating the technical aspects of these movies, but he is one of the most nakedly commercial filmmakers in Hollywood, and that's not necessarily a condemnation. He makes no secret of the fact that he makes movies for a mass audience, there's no pretense of him doing anything more than trying to cater to as many people as can pay to see them. His movies ooze with a contempt for his audience even as he fills every last frame to pander to their every single indulgent whim. A lot of critics couldn't even decide whether Pain and Gain was outright satire or not. It feels like a joke, one where all of us are the punchline.

So to sum up, no, I won't turn my brain off. Doing that would mean I concede that I think it's alright for movies like this to exist. It says that I think a franchise, whose continued vitality hinges on the rose tinted goggles of 20/30 somethings trying to relive their childhood, is worth keeping alive. Oh, I won't deny that I have goggles of my own, but they're not so tightly affixed to my head that I can't see when something has been co-opted to push a irresponsible messages justified by its mass consumption. It's not even junk food anymore, at least junk food can fill you. This movie is nihilism incarnate on celluloid (er...silicon). It wears its cynical purpose nakedly on its sleeve, yet people STILL keep buying it.

Look, not every movie needs to be some sort of an awards-worthy masterpiece in order to be great, they really don't. Movies like Die Hard, Terminator 1 & 2, Pacific Rim, and The Raid aren't what you would call paragons of intellectual stimulation, but as action movies they're really well mounted and engaging on levels far beyond just superficial "coolness". Is it really too much to ask for a movie to be engaging, even just a little bit. I want the movies I watch to give me a reason to give them a few hours of my time. No matter how much I malign Transformers and Michael Bay, I try my best to go into those movies with as open a mind as possible, but it's just the same old thing over and over again.

Already this year we have a lot of good franchise movies that don't suck: The Lego Movie, Captain America 2, X-Men. These are movies that don't have to completely pander to their audience to make money, and they don't have to objectify their female characters to draw men either. I just wish studios didn't have to rely so much on franchises in order to get money, but hey, that's the name of the game I guess. Those movies are proof enough, though, that I shouldn't have to accept shit and hold it to a different set of standards just to set myself apart from supposed "film snobs". A bad movie is a bad movie, so why should I cater myself to bad movies when I'm the one paying my time and money to see it?